I have been reading with increasing concern recently letters debating whether Taiwan is US territory.
First, any debate over whether Taiwan is US territory in theory is precisely that: a theory.
Ray Womack's assertion that nobody gains in perpetuating the present tension (Letters, April 7, page 8) demonstrates the pandemic of delusion in the West over such issues. Unfortunately, Taiwan is only a pawn in the global game of chess between the current grandmaster (the US) and the new challenger (China).
The US has learned, from the mistakes of the British Empire, that you don't need to directly conquer and claim a country as your territory in order to control and exploit it. Arming others to do your dirty work (of which Osama bin Laden and former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein are two notable cases in point) and setting up puppet governments have been integral components of post World War II US foreign policy.
Charles Hong proudly announces that the US single-handedly liberated Taiwan from Japan (Letters, April 4, page 8). Presumably, by this logic Russia single-handedly liberated Berlin from the Nazis. But although the US hasn't historically claimed countries, this was not necessarily out of benevolence.
The US does benefit from the current tension. It stands to make good money from the sale of submarines to Taiwan, without any reassurance that it will protect its freedom (as this would risk angering the Chinese), whilst at the same time brown-nosing PRC communist leaders to ensure it gets as big a slice of the burgeoning Chinese market as possible. Perhaps it is the US' need for self-glorification that in turn makes it extremely prone to self-deception in thinking of itself as the virtuous champion of democracy and human rights everywhere.
The US may not change its history as, invariably being the victor, it writes it. But the lust for self-glorification has lead it to steal history from others -- for example in the film U-571 where the pivotal capturing of the Nazi Enigma encryption machine was incorrectly venerated as US bravery and sacrifice. Or the US glosses over important issues such as support for Hussein and Bin Laden as previously mentioned, allowing such monumental examples of hypocrisy to become overlooked or ignored by a considerable portion of the US public.
There seems to me to be no justifiable reason why the US, Britain and the rest of the Western world should not support Taiwan's independence, should it desire it, and that a failure to do so is a damning indictment of our self-proclaimed moralistic and humanitarian foreign policies.
I do not believe such debate on who Taiwan belongs to in theory is of particular interest to most Taiwanese. Taiwan knows that without firm support from Western countries it is at the mercy of China. But such support requires much more than citing a legitimate peace treaty or the correct Annex to the Hague Convention. It requires the will of the people and government's of these countries to put their own self-interests behind them and do the right thing.
I sincerely hope they will.
Philip Wallbridge
Rochester, UK
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